Two new Film.com items
Two new items from me at Film.com this week: one about Ang Lee’s new NC-17 movie, and one that’s sort of a recap of the summer box office. I wouldn’t complain if you were to click over there and read them. No pressure, though. But it sure would be nice. I’m just sayin’.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
After reading the summer box office story, I thought “I wonder how well Eric’s ratings of the movies correlated with the box office. So I entered the data he gave into Excel, and sure enough there was a correlation: (r=.42). I personally wouldn’t call it a strong correlation, but it’s definitely on the high side of a moderate correlation. And what it means is that movies that Eric rated highly tended to have bigger takes at the box office. So while people decry the public for spending tons of money on bad movies, they are not looking at the whole picture. Overall, the popular movies tend to be movies that got reasonable reviews. Despite the exceptions, the public overall has pretty good taste. I’ll e-mail Eric the Excel spreadsheet.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Third Pirates Movie” Heh.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Two comments Re: NC-17:
The article mentions that no NC-17 film has been considered for an Oscar. That may be true, but shortly after the advent of ratings, “Midnight Cowboy,” then rated X, won Best Picture in 1968. I understand it has since been downgraded to R, and the X rating has changed its name to NC-17, but still. Considering the analysis in the article, it might have been considered.
Second–the list of major studios leaves out MGM, which I had always considered belonged to the group of six mentioned (Sony/Columbia, Universal, Paramount, Disney, Warner, Fox). A glance at Wikipedia shows no recent news I might have missed to give it a reason for being taken off, like Dreamworks becoming affiliated with Paramount in 2005-6, and thus being removed from the list. Inadvertent omission, or did I miss something?